Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You cannot ride a great horse or handle real skill if all you have ever practiced is a child's game.
You cannot soar like a swan while you have only ever flapped like a barnyard chicken.
A Shalok made of two sporting images, both about the gap between practice and capacity. You can't suddenly charh kai ghorhrhai — "mount the war-horse" and handle the reins — if your whole training was khoondee dee khaydaaree, the stick-and-ball game of children. And you can't hansaa saytee chit ulaaseh — "soar with the swans, rising high" — if you have only ever managed kukarh dee odaaree, "the flutter of a chicken," which barely clears the ground. The hans (swan) is Gurbani's emblem of the soul that flies home; the chicken, the mind that never trained its wings. It is an encouragement dressed as a warning: what you practice is what you become able to do. So practice the real thing.
What is something you want to be able to do someday? What small practice now would grow those "wings"?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI